The Antelope's Tale
by Dark Caustic
Summary: Being dead is definitely hazing the differences between "real" and "not real." (set during season 7)


**The Antelope's Tale**

I like him like this. Pliant and fucked out. Long limbs draped all over the mattress, more tangled in the sheets then under them. Breathing deeply, evenly. Been sleeping for like twelve hours too. Must've worn him out. Heh.

But the day is starting to drift into afternoon, and I kinda miss him already, so I crawl up beside him, carefully pull back the blankets to kiss him low and sweet on his stomach. Mouth my way down from his navel to the hairline.

He grunts, all breathy, reaching one hand up to fumble at my head, fingers grazing up my stubble, into my hair, but doesn't open his eyes. So I suck harder at his skin, maybe bruising it, nip once and end with another wet, tongue kiss.

I'll never get enough of the way he tastes.

"Morning," he says, yawning, finally opening his eyes and looking down at me. Hair all in disarray, mouth bringing out a crooked smile, hand still on my head. I rest my palms on his hips, brushing my thumbs over his tanned flesh.

"Thought you were never going to join me," I say.

His dopy morning grin widens a little more. "What are you doing down there?" he asks.

"Making friends," I say in that deep drawl I recently learned makes his toes curl, and nuzzle into him non-to-shyly right where it counts.

"Not fair," he grunts as the hand on the back of my head goes from lax to tense, threading through my hair and holding on.

Yeah, I like him like this.

**XXX**

I'm fucking my brother.

I'm still getting used to those words. Kinda like to taste them every so often just remind myself it's real.

I guess the fucking my brother thing is still pretty new. Well, there is actually no guessing about that one – it _is_ pretty new. Like two weeks new. I'm not sure; it's hard to keep track of time here.

But the being in love with my brother thing? That's far from new. That goes way back. I don't even want to talk about it.

Him loving me? Apparently that goes way back too, but, of course, as Winchester luck would have it, we didn't figure it out until two months ago.

And then there was the devil to deal with…

I don't just mean him trying to destroy civilization. I mean after that, after we got him back in the hole.

Because, well, I didn't get brave enough to make a move on Sammy until he was back from hell.

And then, we'd get all kinds of hot and heavy and a couple of zipper pulls away from finally sealing the deal and discharging the sexual fantasies I've had since I turned nineteen and Sam turned into a gorgeous creature overnight – when good ol' Lucy would start his jabbering.

Judging by Sam's ability to go flaccid in nothing flat, followed quite quickly by the water-works, I know our pal Satan didn't exactly have anything nice to say about Sam's debauchery.

I don't think I've ever had such a chronic case of blue balls. Nothing like holding your not-so-little, little brother through the aftershocks of a serious melt-down while trying to convince your dick to stop taking interest in the proximity of his body.

I'll let you know, if Lucy had any bones to burn, I'da doused them in jet-fuel and stayed to ground up the ashes.

**XXX**

But then we got here, and Lucifer didn't follow Sammy here. I'm waiting for him to ask where the devil's been these past few weeks, but seriously hoping he doesn't. Not ready for that conversation. I know it's coming, but I'll hold it off as long as I can.

Besides, it's lovely here.

We get these long, drawn out sunsets. Paints the sky over the trees in broken oranges and brilliant reds, seems to last forever. And everyday is that perfect place between dusty hot and a tad cold. There's beer and no monsters.

And Sam. The part I like best.

He's coming back to reality for the second time today, blinking blearily at me as I snake up his body.

"Hey," he slurs and kisses me, all sloppy, never mind where my mouth just was. Never thought I'd be into it like this, but man, there's something about the way he lets go for me that I already know I'm never going to get used to. And I have the better part of eternity to abuse.

"Hey," I reply and kiss him back.

After a moment (or ten), he pulls back and looks at me like he left off in the middle of a sentence and can't remember what he was talking about.

"What's wrong?"

"Weren't we? Weren't we supposed to be doing something?" he asks.

I smirk. "Yeah, we were," I say as smoky as I can and slid my hand over his abdomen to cling to his hip.

"No, seriously, Dean," he says and pries my hand off him by the wrist. "I could've sworn," he mutters, now sitting up. "We were doing something. Something important," he says.

"Not… not lately," I lie, but he's not listening.

He's throwing the blankets back and gets up, puts his pants back on and buttons his shirt.

"Sam?" I say and reach for him but he's already opening the door to our room.

**XXX**

"Dean, do you hear that?" he asks, standing right out at the water's edge. Around us, the forest is quiet, there is the small sound of a breeze whispering through the trees, the lake lapping at its banks. Sam squints along the whole clearing, scrutinizing the edges of the water. Watches the shadows that fall between the trees.

"No. What?" I ask.

"I thought I heard," he says, drops off and then points, "Barking!"

Before I can compute what just happened, Sam takes off running along the bank towards… a golden retriever?

It takes me a moment to remember, oh yeah – this is Sam's space too.

I chase after him, and by the time I reach him, he's crouched in front of the dog running his hands through the thing's stupid fur with a smile on his face like it's Christmas morning or some shit. He's muttering things like, "Good boy," and the dog is damn happy to have a friend when Sam suddenly stops, freezes, looks over his shoulder at me and – this is it.

I brace for impact.

"Dean, are we?" he stops, clears his throat. "We're dead, aren't we?" he says, not exactly looking for an answer because he knows.

I can only nod, tightening my hands into fists, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "Yeah, Sammy, we're dead," I somehow manage to say through the desert my mouth has turned into.

The kid doesn't even take his hands off the dog, keeps absentmindedly stroking the creature (who doesn't mind in the least), as he looks out across the lake, squinting from the sun reflecting on the water, the expression on his face somewhere between relief and regret.

He doesn't ask how it happened and I relax the slightest bit.

**XXX**

"Your heaven is a motel room on a lake?" Sam says, hours later, standing in the doorway, blocking out the last daylight.

"It's our heaven," I correct him.

"Sorry," he says, crossing the room to settle himself right in my lap – a thigh on either side of my hips. "_Our_ heaven is a motel room on the banks of a lake?"

My hands, without me even needing me to tell them, find their way up his ass to the swell of his back and under the fabric of his shirt to soft, warm skin. "Yeah, what's wrong with that?"

He runs his hand up my chest, slips his fingers into the collar of my shirt. "Thought it'd be different. It was different the last time we were here," he says.

"That was like a hundred years ago. For you, at least."

Sam smirks. "Yeah, guess so," he says. Leans in, drinks me down like he's parched.

Before long he's working me out of my clothes again, back into the bed. Mattress springs protesting against us, sheets that smell like industrial cleaner, and that freaking _berry_ shampoo Sam uses, enveloping me as something I always wanted.

Hand tracing down the swell of his spine – seeking out the scar from Cold Oak and not finding it – I get lost in those hazel eyes and mutter something stupid.

"We could've been doing this all along," I say, smirking and regret it instantly as he stills over me.

His hand rests right over my heart, underneath that tattoo (which, now that I think about it, Sam did not carry into the other side). He runs the edge of his fingers along the flare of it. "We could've been, but," and then he stops and his hand stills.

"Hey?" I mutter, adjust to see him better. "What is it?"

"I was just thinking – yeah, we could've been doing this forever – but we couldn't have, you know, told anyone about it. Not that there would be many people _to _tell." His voice hitches somewhere down in his chest on that last sentence.

I roll to sit up and cup my palm along his (fucking perfect) cheekbone. "Would you want to tell people?" I ask. "I mean, it's kinda frowned upon, Sammy."

He takes my hand and laces our fingers together like a girl. I don't say anything.

"It would've been nice to have one thing in life that wasn't a secret, you know?" he says. "And the idea of keeping secrets from Bobby…"

I kinda put my tongue in his mouth. I mean, I can't listen to him talk about Bobby right now so I grab his head with my free hand and lean forward and kiss him within and inch of his life.

Which shuts him right up, and lets me go to town on his body. Nestle myself into the space between his collarbones and shoulders, map out the curve of his muscle with my tongue, memorize the taste of the salt on his palms, pocket the way it reminds me of the taste of the Atlantic, swallow his gasps and groans and keep the image of him biting his lip, tendons in his neck straining, retina-burned into my mind.

Maybe I couldn't have this in life but I can sure as hell make the most of it now.

**XXX**

The next day, Sam wakes first. He pushes himself up against me while I'm still lost to reality, wraps his arms around me and brings me flush back to his chest, kisses me right behind my left ear and just _hangs on_.

We stay just like that, in the limbo of waking, for a long moment.

Then he speaks. "I can't believe Bobby outlived us," he says.

Then he holds me tighter as the full impact of that statement reaches him.

I curl a hand around his. "Yeah." I have to wrestle the word out of my mouth.

I hate lying to Sammy.

He presses his face against my back. I can feel the way his nose lies flush against my skin, like he's trying to press himself right into me. Maybe that's possible, here, in the afterlife, to work ourselves into one. I don't know. But it's not working right now, so I just grip him tighter.

"Geeze, Dean, I can't believe," and there is that waiver in his voice again. "It's _over_."

I turn around in his grip and look him in the face. "It's a good thing, Sammy," I promise him. "We don't have to save everyone anymore. We get to be free now, don't you see?"

I watch the guilt hit him like a fucking freight train and it's my fault.

He gets real quiet and still and that distant look in his face that I know I can't kiss off him without even having to try it.

"I'm sorry," is all I can say and I rest my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat in a way I never could while we were alive.

**XXX**

It was so dark that night, you know? That kind of darkness that creeps into the space between bones and makes it's home there. It was a mess. Everything was a fucking mess.

I finally had him and yet we couldn't just get that last bit of connection like I'd been wanting since the first time I jerked in the shower it to the thought of him…

And this isn't about the sex, actually. It's that we were never _really_ alone together as long as Lucifer was making regular guest appearances in Sammy's noggin.

I couldn't stand it. Between trying to figure out how to kill the un-killable monsters, worrying that Sam was really gonna lose it and I would have to scrape his brains off the walls of an abandoned industrial plant, and Bobby…

Well, let's just say, I didn't want to play savior of the world anymore.

I wanted to be alone with my brother.

**XXX**

Sam's stupid dog is nosing at my hand, snuffling. I pet him on the head and try to shoe him away. Doesn't work. Stupid animal.

Sam is sulking along the water's edge.

I am such an idiot.

Look – I know this is all my fault, but, really? You can't blame me… Not with the way things were going, with Sam's broken head and… and what happened to Bobby.

I sit beside him and the dog sits on the other side of him, puts his face on Sam's knee and whines.

Sam gives a hurt little smiles and starts petting the dog.

I wish I could get him to forgive me so easily.

"Dean," he says after a moment.

"Yeah?"

"The last time…" he swallows hard. "The last time we were in heaven," he starts.

Part of me wants to laugh at the absurdity of this. That we've been here before.

"We were on a road," he continues.

"I remember," I say as my hand – once again of its own accord – lays itself on Sam's thigh and rubs it.

"But not this time?"

I shrug. "Maybe we're done this time? Like," I wave my free hand at nothing, "Like, it's over. For real." I throw him my best smile but he's not looking.

"This is your heaven," he says again.

I look at the dog. "Sam, it's not all my heaven."

"No, Dean, I mean, the trees, the _motel_," he spits the word like an accusation. "I mean, yes, the dog is mine, yeah, but the rest of this," now he's standing up. "It's yours. It's for you," and then he mutters something under his breath that sounds haunting like, 'even I'm for you.'

"What?" I demand, get in his face. We're about to fight. In _heaven_.

Dad would not be proud.

Then again he'd probably not be exactly thrilled with us being, well, an _us_, and I should really stop thinking about this now.

"Nothing," Sam says in that dismissive voice he gets sometime when he really wants to bitch out at me but isn't in the mood for losing an argument.

"No, really, Sam. Please, speak your mind," I spit at him.

"Dean," he says, now passive. "I'm just confused, that's all. Being dead takes some getting used to."

I can't argue with that.

And he's looking over my shoulder towards the motel with this expression like he's trying to dig something up from deep inside his memory and it's really just a matter of time…

But before I can distract him with the promise of sex, he finally manages to make a connection.

"Where's the Impala?" he asks.

I almost fall down. "What?" I sputter.

"Dean," he's cutting my name off like its ice and staring at me. His hands on his hips and even the fucking dog is glaring at me. "The Impala. This is _yours_, Dean. I would never," he starts, cuts the words off.

"What? You would never pick a motel as your eternal abode? Don't get high and mighty on me, Sam. That was the life we had."

"The life you liked," he says.

And I can't argue with him, so I don't.

"And in that life that you were so insistent we had, that we hunt, that we fulfill Dad's legacy, like good little soldiers, you had the Impala. So where is she, Dean? That car was the only long-term relationship you ever had in your life."

He's stalking away from me, towards the motel.

I guess I'm doomed to spend eternity trying to keep up with his massive strides.

He's looking behind the motel, like she'd be back there. Like she'd be parked in the grass behind this stupid motel because it doesn't have a parking lot because it's not real. Or it is real, but it's just a figment some broken part of my soul drudged up. Whatever.

I follow him all the way around the building. When he gets back to the front, he stands there, dumbfounded. "Why wouldn't _you_ bring the Impala with you?" he asks, cocking his head to the side slightly.

I try to look cool – I'd always been good at that in life – but maybe Sammy knows me better than I think he does, or maybe heaven gives me some sort of transparency that gives him an edge, or whatever, but he doesn't fall for it. He looks at me like I'm a puzzle to be solved and I know he's not going to let it rest and even my talented mouth isn't going to stop this particular inquisition.

"You know something," he says, flatly.

"No, I don't," I say.

"Dean," he warns, steps in on me.

I can smell him and that's when something strikes me.

He doesn't smell like the Sam I died with.

He smells like seventeen-year-old Sammy, standing in that shitty apartment Dad left us in for nine months while he chased a fucking sea monster and had to get a job on a tanker as a cover (besides the point). Like Sammy with his acceptance letter to Stanford and his first kiss still drying on his lips and my heart trying to drop down into my shoes at the realization that I was losing him as a brother and never going to have him as more than that because he had a thing for perky blonde chicks with bookish tendencies.

He smelt like suntan lotion and sweet berry shampoo and generic deodorant, the kind that's not supposed to have a smell but totally does, and he was standing there with that smile on his face and that letter (I say letter, it was a mother-fucking _novel_) thrumming with excitement, with the knowledge that he had an _out_ and the world was his oyster, infinite. All in a moment.

That's what he smells like.

I have to lay my hand on his chest because suddenly all of that is fumbling through me and I'm not sure this is actually Sammy. Maybe this is a Sam of my heaven and the real Sammy is locked up somewhere alone in his own heaven. You know, his heaven where he's perpetually having thanksgiving dinner with _somebody_ else's fucking family and I sort of make a little wounded noise down in my throat at that thought.

Besides, he doesn't, _this_ Sam doesn't remember everything like I do, so maybe he's not real. He's just another figment of my heaven, manifesting my desires. Made so real that he's a handful of inches away from discovering that he's not actually real which means that Sam, the real Sam, _my _Sammy, would never actually want to be with me, yet alone be with me _forever._

There's that feeling again – the same one I got when Sam left for Sanford. The one wherein my heart takes up permanent residence in my feet and my chest feels like every single rib has cracked and caved in.

"Dean?" he's saying now, but not in an accusing way, but in the same way you ask a small child if they're in pain.

I push against him with the flat of my palm and I'm met with hard muscle and warm flesh like livewire. "Are you real?" I ask him.

"I think so," he says.

Being dead is definitely hazing the differences between "real" and "not real."

**XXX**

Sam sits me down in our fucking motel room and makes a big fuss about bringing me a beer or some shit. I watch him closely – scrutinizing his every detail to see if he is really Sam or some impression of Sam that my twisted mind conjured up to keep me happy in heaven.

After I spend a good ten minutes internally analyzing the way he rubs at his lips sometimes, I give up.

If he's not real, he's a damn good imitation.

Maybe this is actually some lower level of hell, designed to make me question everything until I drive myself completely mad.

That thought was actually, incredibly, not helpful.

"What do you remember?" I finally ask him after a long silence.

"I remember a lot of one-on-one time with the devil," he says. "I remember he pretended to be you and got me alone, and…," Sam stops there, furrows his brow. "That's it, actually. That's my last memory." He sits for a moment to digest this then smiles, "Guess I was so happy here with you that I didn't sit down to really consider what my last memory was."

"So you don't remember dying?" I ask him, holding my breath.

"No," he says, shaking his head. He seems oddly at peace with this. I'm not sure if my Sammy would be. "I imagine a leviathan was involved."

I laugh. I don't mean to. It just comes out. Like a bark. Not a real laugh, a tension relieving laugh.

"What?" he asks.

"You're okay with it, just like that?" I ask.

Sam shrugs. "This is the first time I've been to heaven without someone zapping me back right away. It's kind of nice."

Now I'm laughing for real. "Touché."

Sam laughs with me for a moment. It feels good. Like taking off your shoes at the end of a long day, but then Sam is rubbing a hand across his lips and getting serious again.

"Wait," he says, pausing.

I set my jaw, wait for the other shoe to drop.

"I remember something else," he says.

"Yeah?" I ask, my voice kinda quaky.

"Yeah," Sam says, staring hard into the middle distance. "I remember… water."

I swallow hard.

"I remember you pulling me out of the water," he says and bites down on the inside of his check, furrowing his brow. "You pulled me out of the water," he says again.

I look down at my hands. I seem to have brought my scars with me. And Sam didn't. Something inside of me snaps.

"Dean, you know something, don't you?" Sam asks. Fucking psychic boy, I keep forgetting.

"Yeah, I know something," I say.

**XXX**

He follows a step behind me along the far curve of the lake where I come to a stop at the literal edge of the water.

"Dean?" he says, behind me, a thousand questions loaded into the one syllable.

"There," I say and point.

"What am I supposed to be seeing?" he asks, stepping up beside me.

"The Impala," I say.

He's squinting across the lake.

I shake my head, "No, not over there, _there,_" I say and point more intensely at the surface of the water.

Sam leans forward a bit and then crouches down to look into the lake.

And there she is. My baby. Submerged in the lake, her roof only under about half a foot of the crystal clear water.

Sam just stares at her for a long, long silent moment.

Around us, a slight breeze nuzzles at the trees, birds chirp, the water moves gently but even the warmth of this eternal sun can't relax the tension out of my shoulders.

"Dean, why is the Impala in a lake in your heaven?" Sam asks.

I shrug, kick a rock into the water.

Sam stands back up again, can't decide if he wants to keep his eyes focused on me or the car.

"Dean?" he asks again.

I crack. Wide open. In fact, I think it's actually audible.

"I couldn't fix you, Sammy," I admit. "I couldn't fix you and…," and now I can't look at him. "Bobby's dead."

"What?" Sam asks, and I must be swaying because his hands are suddenly on my shoulders, fixing me on the spot.

But my knees still want to give out, even though they've never been so treacherous in life. I thought I was sturdier than this.

"Dean?" he asks, so close to me that his hot breath is ghosting over my face.

"Bobby died. The leviathans got to him and everything was going to hell again, and you were hanging out with Lucifer and it was too much, Sam. I couldn't fix it this time," I say. My hands are wound up in his shirt, clutching hard, keeping him here with me.

"What are you saying, Dean?" he asks.

That's when my stupid traitor knees go to waste and suddenly we're sitting on the muddy bank; Sammy's hands still clutching to me like I'm drowning and I might be drowning and I pulled him out of the car and out of the water with the same such clutch and why can't he just _remember_?

"I'm saying I gave up, Sam. I gave up."

He's looking back over at the Impala and putting it all together, turning slowly back to me. I watch it click.

"You did this?" he asks but it's more like a statement. His grip on me relaxes a little and, no, Sammy, don't let go of me yet. I'll fall apart.

I swallow around the boulder in my throat. Finally get enough muster to nod.

"What did you do, Dean?"

"I put you in the passenger seat and drove into a river," I say, the words barely squeak out of me.

"You? You _killed_ us?" and his hands are going even more lax on me and if he let's go, I'll drown. I'll drown right here on the banks of a stupid fictional lake in our, _my_, stupid heaven.

And maybe he's not my Sam, and maybe my Sammy is still alive and lying comatose in some hospital bed because his idiot brother tried to kill him and didn't succeed.

"Sam, Sammy," I say, pawing desperately at him, but he's already moving away from me, standing up.

"You were the one who always wanted to keep hunting, Dean!" he shouts. His voice is loud here, louder than it ever was in life. It seems to echo off of nothing and back at me. "You were the one who told us we had to keep going, that we had to keep killing stuff, saving people. And then," he does that thing where he gets real quiet, breathes harshly out his nose. One more look to the Impala, not at me, and he's storming off.

I fall forward onto my hands. "Sam!" I call after him, and even if he hears me, he doesn't look back.

**XXX**

It was dark that night. So dark. And why did the fate of the world _always_ come to rest on my shoulders?

Sam was, well, not all there. Or he was, he just had some additional pieces that were hurting his ability to _be_ all there.

With Bobby gone – gone and got himself killed by the monsters – what was I supposed to do? I was standing there in that fucking junkyard, with those stupid cars scattered around us, like skeletons, like remnants of a world we skirted along the edges of, and this huge battle out in front of us with no allies to count on, and I just…

Gave up. I guess that's the best way to put it.

I loaded him up and put him in the car and held his hand and drove right off a bridge and into the river and when I came to, I was still in the car. It was rapidly filling with water and Sam was still out if it.

I didn't actually know we (or maybe just me?) were dead, at first.

I didn't even hurt, I just moved. I pulled myself out of the car and somehow managed to work my way around the car and tugged open the door and pulled Sammy out, holding him against my chest with one arm, almost drowning.

Come to think about it, we probably should've drowned.

Except we were already dead, so I was able to drag him out onto the banks and when I looked up and saw that we were _so not_ in South Dakota anymore, I realized it worked.

We were free.

Of course, I kept expecting some nosy angel to appear and zap us back to our bodies, and when that didn't happen, I relaxed a little.

A little enough to make a move on my brother. Which, in retrospect, was probably not the best move, because if he _hadn't_ been into it, I would've been looking down at a seriously awkward eternity.

Which is just more fodder for the "this isn't my Sammy argument."

I crumple up on the bank and put my face in my hands.

I don't think heaven is supposed to taste so much like despair.

**XXX**

Eventually, I manage to get up. The sun sets. The skyline is beautiful and none of it matters. I drag myself back into the motel. I don't know where Sam or his stupid dog are. I shuck out of my jacket and barely manage to pull my boots off before collapsing on the mattress.

It strikes me how sad it is that this is my heaven – a motel room. Like we didn't spend enough of our life in transit. But Sam's here, and that was what mattered.

If it really is Sam.

**XXX**

It's late.

The bed dips behind me. There's a breath against my back, and Sam's hesitating, hovering on the edge of touch, the inches between us slowly creeping into miles of eternity.

Finally, "Dean?"

"Yeah?" I say. Don't look at him.

There is another incredibly tense, long moment.

Sam just breathes into it.

Then, "Thank you," he says. Touches me. Lays his arm on mine and pushes his body flush to me.

Kisses the back of my neck.

I shift enough to look at him.

"Thank you?" I echo back at him.

"Yeah," he says. "It's _over_." There's relief in his voice but guilt on his face.

I crush him to my body. "It is," I say.

He mutters something into my chest.

"What?" I ask, releasing him just enough for him to look up at me.

"Rather it be you than some monster," he admits, quietly, like he's confessing to murder.

Before I completely catch up with the program, we're kissing again. Melting into each other, forming one unit of heat and please and yes.

Yes.


End file.
